MST3K: Anti-cinema?

Have you ever seen "Mystery Science Theater 3000"? As I said, the innovation is that they gave a running, sarcastic commentary to the bad movies in real time. None of the generations of shows you are referencing did that. In fact, they rarely even acknowledged the bad films were bad.

But if you want to continue to insist that they are the same thing, knock yourself out.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

Some times, but MST3K amped up everything about the production, even though someone like me recognized the concept. Those characters that mixed in with the sound and video would have required much more production. The host did all of the wisecracking after the commercials and before the movie restarted. Showing the movie required one of those gadgets that allows the broadcaster to show a movie on film as a real-time video broadcast, as long as the film didn't break.

It wasn't a criticism of the older fare that they couldn't manage it, production-wise (though it should be noted MST3K was a micro-budget show, so I don't think budget was really the issue). It's just noting the distinction. The things you're talking about still present the movies themselves in a straightforward manner, and have a fraction of the joke-making, and none of it in a way that is overlaid with the film. In fact, a good chunk of the jokes you'll hear on MST3K literally wouldn't work unless they happened as the movie was playing. It's a genre unto itself.

I think they're clearly fundamentally different things, even if they share a vibe. But they're no more the same than Weird Al is Tom Lehrer.

Yeah, but the older ones were direct, locally produced antecedents; you could not miss that if you'd seen the previous versions. MST3K just added a new feature, not unlike adding a slow speed to a kitchen blender.

Here is how my local market, Washington D.C.'s Channel 20, presented The Brain That Wouldn't Die back in the 1980s, straight...


Versus "Mystery Science Theater 3000" skewering the same movie...



Again, if you want to continue to say they are essentially the same thing, an ever-so-slight variation on the same idea, agree to disagree. Enjoy.

Those old movies are beyond the need for criticism with budgets that were even lower than MST3K.

Watch....if you dare.....

Huh? I thought we were talking about budget being why these old shows couldn't do the overlay thing MST3K did?

The movie wasn't overlaid. The "host" appeared after ad breaks before the film to video gadget was restarted.

No, I don't think it's a mere feature, it's fully transformative. Again, most of the humor from MST3K literally wouldn't work if it were not happening at the same time as the film.

And more to the point, arguing that it's an influence or antecedent is fine, but we have someone in here asking what it is, so pointing them to its influence and suggesting it's the same thing is highly misleading. It'd be like someone asking who David Bowie is and you sending them a Velvet Underground song.

Yes, I know. I think you've gotten tripped up. Here's the sequence:

First, you excuse these "hosted" films for not doing the same thing as MST3K because of budget:

Then I pointed out that I wasn't criticizing them for lack of budget, I was simply noting that they were different:

At that point you got confused and apparently thought we were talking about the films themselves:

I immediately notice the confusion and pointed it out:

And then you respond by switching back to the old hosted format stuff, with no explanation or recognition of the switch:

I know the movie wasn't overlaid: that's been my central point this entire time, so if you're attempting to explain that to me (and bouncing back and forth inexplicably, as demonstrated in the other quotes), it suggests to me you're not really reading what I'm saying, or at least not taking it on board.

Yes. That's exactly right. That's the risk and it's one of the reasons I don't have a lot of reverence for critic worship. Or more specifically, using them as a way to limit that risk. Not that there aren't good critics (or at least there used to be). Not that I don't want people to bring some kind of educated or articulate or passionate talk about what they are watching (I obviously do, and preferably all three if I can get it). But because it gets people pre-emptively pushing films away that there is critically negative consensus on. And even during the golden age of film criticism, critics often got things 'wrong'. They pushed back on the supposed lack of morality in a film, or they valued seeing money up on the screen and resented any hint of cheapness, or the film was simply way ahead of the curve and they didn't see the potentially value in it once audiences caught up.



In short, before watching a film, who gives a rats ass what critics think. Not that I can't sometimes be compelled towards or away from a film because of negative or positive accolades. I can. Of course I can because that's how human brains work. We stupidly trust the opinions of the majority. And we desperately cling to our time like it is invaluable currency due to its inevitable finiteness, making us overly resentful for anything that 'wastes' it (but its actually very much this pointless worry that ends up making us hate movies that might not be up to snuff in the first place, something which is in itself it's own conversation that I will save for another time)



So what is the issue I have with this exactly? Well, it has a lot to do with the word youre using here. Possibility. Yes, that comes with all sorts of danger that you will think the film is a total turkey, but it also contains every other positive outcome. And everything in between. And so watching a film now becomes about discovery. And limiting or avoiding risk, limits this. So is risk really such a bad thing? Or is it so terrible to maximize risk? What is that quote about the road less travelled?



Now I already understand I'm not going to get many takers on this. That most people, in general, avoid risk like the plague. Or maybe it's just the majority of people don't think film watching is the place to play these games of chance. That this is the one activity where they want to be as sure of the outcome as possible (and by outcome, I mean their general satisfaction with the movie). Movies are there way to relax. To, effectively, kill time as painlessly as possible.



But for me this is just about as blech as it comes. When I put a film on, I most often have zero idea how I am going to respond to it. Frequently even putting on films that I think might be completely contrary to my tastes. And then....I get to see what happens. I can live in the moment of discovery. I can find and notice things that maybe others have discarded because they were too busy fidgeting from the frustration of not getting what they hoped for. And, I've got to say, it's a pretty wonderous thing. And it's a feeling that can happen even while I'm watching movies I don't like very much. Because it's all about the one experience this movie, and this movie only, can supply me. For better or worse. Just like if you are walking down that lesser travelled road and you pick up some random stone, and hold it, and feel it, and look at it, and know no one else has probably paid any attention to it for who knows how long. Maybe never.



And then, sometimes, the movies happens to be pretty good. Or even great. Sometimes that forgotten rock you have picked up has a bit of a sparkle to it. And if you hadn't thought to hold it in your hand, and the sun didn't hit it at just the right angle, no one would have ever seen the little secret it contains.



So to me, even though it isn't a completely irrelevant matter, it doesn't matter all that much if it was the best stone I could have picked up along the way. Or even a good stone. It just matters that I picked it up. And I am looking at it. And can contemplate it and possibly, somehow, see something beautiful in it. And in those instances where it is little more than just a plain old rock, maybe all that was beautiful was the simple act of picking it up. Choosing something out of everything else that's out there and giving it your attention.



Now, if someone has no particular interest in a rock (or a movie), I don't blame them for not grasping why looking at a rock (or a movie), simply to look at it without any promise of any tangible reward at all can have much value. "Was it at least shaped like a dick", some might hope, in order to understand that maybe it was something to laugh at. Something that will help them measure its worth. But the point is, it was just a rock (or a movie). And if you like rocks (or movies) just being rocks (or movies) it doesn't really matter which one you pick up. It doesn't need to be shaped like a dick. It just needs to be a rock (or movie)



Now at this point, I think you might start thinking that this really doesn't have much to do with movies at all. Or even rocks. And you would sort of be right. It's a philosophical approach to life. And in my life, one of the things I like, are movies (also music, conversation, paintings, books, animals and....that's about it). These are what I like to pass my time with. This is the road I travel down. And since I have chosen my road, I am almost ambivalent towards what I am taking in as I walk down it. It's all good. It's all worth seeing. Because it's my road and no one elses.


Now, of course there will be arduous stretches, and boring stretches, and exciting stretches, and dangerous scary stretches, even times I step in animal turds and shake my fists at the skies. But they are all a part of it. It's all one big discovery and I just let happen. And fretting over whether one part is better than another part, is a distraction. What matters is once all those movies are lumped together, a big lump we can call life, it's about the adventure that led me to each of them.


Of course, I'm pretty firmly on record here of having pretty strong stances on all sorts of films. Ones I say I hate from the depths of my soul, and other ones I'm indifferent towards and then all the many ones I love. So maybe I'm just a big hypocrite. But the reality is, like the title Minio's other thread, is that I don't actually know how to hate any of them. I still appreciate the ones that don't work. Or the ones that have nothing to offer at all. But due to the fact I like the whole nature of debate, I throw these verdicts of mine out there to just generate conversation. And I will debate fiercely to defend those pointless designations, mostly just to keep conversations interesting. But the reality is debate is probably too strong a word for any of it. I don't really need anyone to have their minds changed or to agree with anything I said. All I want is to be heard, and the 'debate' is just a way to tell the tales of my journey. And you've got to have your highs and lows, your ups and downs, to keep things interesting.



As for the rest of your post, maybe I'll get to some of those points later, but this one kind of sapped me for the moment.

Are we seriously needing to have the debate of whether spook show hosts are the same as Mystery Science Theatre bleed over onto another page?

How is this even possible?

Oh, what do we have here....

"Without having read all of these comments in detail, I'd throw in some personal experience"

Ah, it's all coming together now. We've got someone glancing over what everyone is saying, like it's Huck Finn and a report is due by morning, thereby leaving everyone else to have to keep repeating themselves while he reminisces about tv shows he used to watch.

Got it.

That's why it can be interesting to watch Svengoolie sometimes, as there is a semi-bridge between the simple intro/screening and the riffing of MST3k.

I like Svengoolie. I even have a t-shirt. That and Noir Alley are the two things I miss the most about having cable.

Maybe it's just a cultural thing.

I've had a whole sequence of shows like Svengoolie, Ghost Host, Mystery, etc., as well as a pile of cheesy horror DVDs for most of my life. My experience of people like me is that they are mostly (but not exclusively) male, have a geeky side to their personality, etc.

For me, horror-sci-fi is an escape from "real life". It's relaxing because, unlike crime, war, gangsters and disease.....vampires, artificial humans, and ray gun battles don't really exist. Living with the undead is easy.

Yeah, for sure. It's also a psychological thing, like just wanting to be out of the real world for a couple hours, watching something really stupid. Sometimes stupid stuff is the preventative measure for avoiding brain rot, over-stimulation, over-seriousness and too much high culture. It's important that both the movie, the audience and the "host" completely dive into that scenario. Imagine someone doing erudite commentary for a movie like The Crawling Eye. That would make zero sense. Giving that same movie to "Gore DeVal" and a smoke machine, makes it work.

One of our local TV guys who did those costumed, idiot commentaries was a guy who also, in different parts of his work week, did a kid clown show, the weather forecast and occasionally did voice-overs for used car ads. He was a local beloved personality who also waved from an open car in the July 4 parade.

I acknowledge that watching MST3K sacrifices something. My position is a) it sacrifices very little, b) I get something in return for that sacrifice, and c) logically following from b), the opposite choice also sacrifices things.

A quick elaboration:

First, sacrificing very little: you say I'm letting it "dictate what you should think about those films," but I think this is a massive overstatement. I've managed to appreciate a number of things about these cheesy old movies even with the jokes overlaid. It would be silly for me to deny that this is not a hurdle to my ability to do that, but I think it's about as silly to pretend it represents a massive challenge, too. Anyone thoughtful enough to benefit from your advice is probably thoughtful enough to mostly account for the circumstances and see things "through" them. So the thing I am sacrificing is the likelihood that I would be moved by these films to begin with (I hope we can agree that's low) combined with the likelihood that I would also be unable to appreciate it "through" the jokes. It's a narrow slice of a narrow slice, a tiny little overlap in the Venn diagram of things good enough to be worthwhile on their own, but not good enough to stop the jokes from totally obscuring them.

Second, what we get in return: we get a lot of humor and joy that would not otherwise exist! In exchange for the low probability of missing out on something interesting or worthwhile in the cinematic rough, we get the high probability of having a really good time watching really funny people talk over it. We also breathe new life and interest into these films.

Third, what the inverse sacrifices: all of the above, basically. A lot of humor, wit, and observation (a really great riff points out lots of things about its target that many people would have missed). And the result would be that these underseen films are seen even less, some of them ceasing to exist in any meaningful sense. I still think that's a good clarifying question: is it better for people to see the films riffed, or to not see them at all? This question isn't just a hypothetical, either: it is very nearly the actual choice you face.

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Framing does a lot of the work here, I think. You choose to look at this as a work of art being defaced. I look at it as a work of art that has already been ignored, and is now being repurposed and made valuable to new people. I like the analogy of a secondhand store: when you donate something to it you lose the opportunity that it will be useful to you, that it will trigger some profound memory relating to it, and all sorts of other things. But generally the things we give away have a small chance of doing that, and by giving up that small chance we enable someone else to repurpose them. This, too, is a beautiful thing. It's creative and inventive. It's a form of sampling, of remixing. My wife is refinishing and reupholstering some dining room chairs right now, and it is absolutely interfering with our ability to appreciate them in their original form.

I can see how this stuff looks bad if you start from a hypothetical baseline of "all art exists and all of it might be viewed," but the actual baseline is "these works of art have already started to disappear and this stops it from happening."

All humor, all satire even, has the chance to delegitimize and/or stigmatize open-minded viewing of the thing it satirizes. But it would be awful if it ceased to exist, too. There are costs to all of this.

"Let a man face in whatever direction he will. He inevitably turns his back on half the world."

Most of this stuff is answered by my reply to Minio, I think. You can piggyback on some of that if you want, or not. But I'll try to reply to some of the stuff it doesn't address:

We sort of agree here. This isn't quite what you're describing, but back when I wrote reviews regularly I made a point not to read any reviews of a film until I had reviewed it. I didn't want to be influenced by them.

I agree with all this, except for the implication (correct me if I'm wrong) that it's bad to treat our time as valuable because of its finiteness. I think that's a pretty good argument for selectivity of some sort. And, let's be real, everybody engages in it somewhat. Nobody's considering the entire pool of available media, or using a random number generator to pick among them.

Preemptively, I admit the opposite is also very bad, trying to overoptimize things in a way that strips them of any meaning or humanity. See below for an example of that.

That it's paved with terrible movies? I think that's how it goes. The pedant in me (close to the totality of the person) wants to note he just said it made "all the difference," too. That doesn't necessarily mean it was better. People think Frost was all about bucking trends but I think he was just secretly schooling everyone about opportunity costs.

Anyway, I am in the awkward (but familiar) position of disagreeing with the degree of what you're saying but not its general orientation. If you put everyone in the United States on a continuum, with "wants to know exactly what they see before they see it" at one end, and people who roll dice to decide what to watch because of the profundity of unpredictability on the other, I would be well, well above the 50th percentile, even if I would not be as close to the second extreme as you are.

I had an argument a lot like this with a friend of mine not too long ago. I urged them to keep watching a show because it would get better/be worth it, and they bemoaned the idea of having to watch anything that did not meet some threshold of interest immediately, and hold it consistently. I argued that this would preclude a lot of very good things, and eventually realized that all they wanted was a steady drip of C+ entertainment, forever. Things you can enjoy in the background, things you always enjoyed just enough to keep watching, things they stood almost no chance of disliking. And I found that profoundly sad. I told them as I got older, I cared less about merely filling time, and preferred things that took big, bold swings, even if they failed, compared to things content to bunt for a hit every time.

Hopefully you're nodding your head, recognizing what is more or less your exact position here, even if I pull up a little short while you keep going.

For me the hard part is that this means I cannot watch things whenever I want, simply for lack of energy and focus. To prefer ambitious or unusual things requires that I pay sufficient attention to them. So, paradoxically, my desire for risk causes me to watch less, because I won't watch those things if I'm not alert and engaged enough to really take them in. I think almost all forms of ideological purity run into this kind of problem when put into practice, where they begin to interfere even with themselves, because of our own limitations.

Eh. You contain multitudes. Which is fine but it's sometimes hard to argue with multitudes.

Up to you, I think you were right to boil it down to broader life philosophy, most of the other things flow directly from that.