problems with indie films, pt. 1

Since the 1950s and the birth of 'counter culture' as we know it, the mainstream has continually absorbed the signifiers associated with various movements until said signifiers become widely disseminated and steadily lose the cultural purchase they once possessed. It happened to punk (see: Supre shirts with safety pins, Ramones shirts on sale at K-Mart), it happened to hip hop, it happened to grunge - it's a cycle that endlessly repeats itself.

The same is true of the signifiers and tropes of indie movies. The impetus behind this post has been two movies I've seen in the last fortnight, both of which are ostensibly banal Hollywood genre movies that tried to decorate unimaginative characters and plots with indie songs and images in a superficial attempt to connect with/conflate themselves with a demographic that A) enjoys basking in their own reproduced codes, and B) shuns cultural product made from mainstream media outlets/isn't championed by blogs (this is an important caveat, since 'Where The Wild Things Are' is a movie from a major studio that still excites the indie kids).

I would have to identify myself as part of the indie crowd. I love the fact that it's incredibly codified - music and image have always been connected and to say that visual and musical aesthetics should be totally disengaged is rubbish. Style is important and exciting. It obviously goes too far at times, but this has been the folly of the subculture since way back. While I mention above that us indie kids love recognising and reproducing our stylistic codes, nothing annoys us more than when those codes are adopted by outsiders for commercial reasons.

This brings us to 500 Days of Summer, and Whip It.


I'll start with the latter since it annoyed me most. Whip It is essentially a sports movie wherein a small town character wants to play a sport in spite of disapproval from her parents and other typical obstacles, while also, through this sport, meeting a romantic counterpart bringing its own complications. The supposed difference with Whip It is that the sport in question is female roller derby, which is admittedly a much grungier, underground sport than a lot of sport movies delve into. But the superficial and highly-sanitised world of roller derby presented here is not enough of a subcultural hook on which to hang the otherwise typical story; nor is enough to have a character dress like Daria to tell us that she is alternative. I won't go into the details of the plot because that's irrelevant to my point. Suffice it to say that if you are surprised by anything in this entire movie then you have probably never watched a film in your entire life.

No, besides the plot, what offended me most was the bold and careless appropriation of indie/alternative images and references. There is one scene in which the main character and the love interest (who of course plays in a band that sound exactly like The Libertines) sit in front of a giant mural painting of Daniel Johnston's The Unfinished Album. It's almost as subtle as when the mother and daughter reconcile in front of the fridge, which happens to have a LOVE HEART MAGNET POSITIONED IN THE MIDDLE - just in case you didn't realise that this was a moment of reconciliation. But then, in case you didn't get that this move is alternative, that same male character later wears a t-shirt bearing THE SAME DANIEL JOHNSTON IMAGE later on. Twice within twenty minutes we are bombarded with a cartoon that would mean nothing to most of the audience were it not for the fact that it's now plastered all over Guitar Hero as well.

I won't go into the soundtrack (which is ever present beneath the movie and plays like a fifty-year-old's guide to indie music) and the fact that the roller derby community overtly adheres to the typical patriarchal and heterosexual norms of the culture to which they are apparently opposed (although I will point out the unnecessary references they make to several characters' sexuality, just to clear up an ambiguity the audience might've had). Take my word for it that this is trite and unnecessary.

Now for 500 Days of Summer, a film that billed itself as a not-your-typical love story but is, in fact, very much a typical love story. The structure of the film itself suggests those involved were aiming for an updated Annie Hall, but where that film went for equally flawed, three-dimensional, occasionally-likable characters that engage in intelligent conversation, 500 Days does none of these things. For the record, having two characters with diametrically opposed views of relationships entering into one does not result in any meaningful interrogation of relationships; two caricatures positioned at either extreme of the relationship-outlook spectrum do not provide any insight when thrown together.

That's largely the story, a typical odd couple situation. The twist is that they don't end up together, and they flog it as though that's never been done before in the history of cinema. It also includes the obligatory indie soundtrack, the indie dress sense (skinny ties and cardigans, both of which I own and sport regularly), and the fact that it stars Mrs Death Cab For Cutie. There's also some obtuse surrealistic moments that feel like they were thrown in as an afterthought so as to appear more 'experimental' (read: non mainstream). These scenes include: a visit to the cinema in which the character sees himself playing out a French art house movie on the big screen; a scene in which the story is presented split-screen, one side showing the actual events and one side showing the idealised events; and a scene in which everything turns into a cartoon sketch a la Juno.

The thing is that neither of these two movies would be so offensive if they didn't so aggressively - but also lazily - try and align themselves with a style and culture to which they don't belong. The superficial attempts they present make both feel fairly ingenuous and don't invite good-will.

I blame Juno for these two movies, which is a shame since that movie was really good. Yes, it was jam packed with indie references and codes, but it was actually funny, the characters were real, and you actually got the sense that these guys might just know something about the subcultural world into which they'd been posited. But alas, Juno took a lot of money and went on to win an Oscar and so now we are left to suffer through the Juno-lite run-throughs of less-imaginative minds that only further destroy any value left in the prominent '00s indie signifiers flogged here.

Alternative culture has been through this before, and it moves on and comes up with something new. This isn't the end of the world, but it is very annoying.

(Clarification: I use the words 'offended' and 'offensive' quite liberally above. I am not actually personally offended that my beloved indie tropes have been used by the mainstream, I am mainly offended that someone out there thought I was stupid enough to blindly lap it up in place of any story or characters).