Laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep and you weep alone.

[thehefner]

Up until yesterday, aside from movie geeks like me who frequent sites like aintitcool.com and chud.com, the vast majority of America had never heard of Park-Chan Wook's excellent and (understandably) overrated film OLDBOY. And now, thanks to a media far more interested in giving an evil, screwed-up little psycho exactly what he wants by plastering him all over the news, making this story more about the killer than the victims... that's all started to change.

I remember when I first saw those pictures of Cho with the hammer and the gun, I thought to myself, "Oh, shit." Besides that, CHUD.com has expressed my thoughts on this particular matter first here and then followed it up with an editorial here.

Once again, let's all jump on the blame bandwagon. Let's all point fingers. Let's all blame art. Let's all have our heads up our asses so we can do this all over again the next time some senseless tragedy happens. Let's make sense of it by ignoring all logic. Many people won't be like this. But many will. The fact that enough average people will think this way to actually matter depresses me deeply.

If there's an upside to this, it's that this will now almost certainly guarantee that the OLDBOY American remake ain't ever gonna happen. Thank fucking God. When Justin Lin, director of ANNAPOLIS, was behind it, he wanted to replace the octopus scene with a taco. A fucking taco, people.

No word on how this will affect the Bollywood remake of OLDBOY, though.

Comments

[bimmin.livejournal.com]

"Ta -ah-oh-co?" <--said like Mr Burns' "Re-sci-ling"...

WTF...

I heard about the Oldboy reference last night and shook my head in a very fatalistic way. Like you said, let's all just attack art...the one thing left with which to express emotions without harm. Go team human beings! ;_;

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

The thing about that Mr. Burns scene my icon is from? I saw that and thought, "wow, five people will get that joke, and two of them will be dead in the next five minutes."

It was bad enough when Columbine happened and everyone went after Marilyn Manson, for whom I couldn't really give a thrupenny fuck anyway, and I was still deeply disappointed. And then they go after video games, which is to today what rock and roll was to the 50's-60's and heavy metal was to the 90's. And of course, they went after comics in the 50's, almost destroying the industry and crushing the wonderful EC comics (TALES FROM THE CRYPT, WEIRD SCIENCE, MAD magazine being the sole survivor).

I'm not a political person because it ties into my own personal issues (that's a whole other discussion there), but censorship is one of the few issues that really fires me up. Even if it's not full-blown censorship, but something as small as saying, "Well, this is what triggered the killer!"

[gore-whore-5.livejournal.com]

Wait. I can understand blaming movies, because that's what always comes after school shootings, but tacos? And Bollywood? This is just too much for my tired brain to take.

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

It's why I'm the way I am today. Save yourself.

[seangrimm.livejournal.com]

I was told by a friend of mine that the American remake of Oldboy was going to have SPOILERLOOKAWAYTHEINCESTENDOFSPOILERS completely taken out because it is far too taboo for Americans to deal with.

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

Yeah, between that and the taco... God, what a cock-up that would have been.

[seangrimm.livejournal.com]

I didn't hear about the taco until now but no American actor could recreate the squid scene. There just isn't a way they could match it.

[civilbloodshed.livejournal.com]

A taco?! I'm usually all about the tacos, but wtf? No.

Re: The obligatory tasteless meme

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

Ooh, *sharp intake of breath*

I ain't touchin' that one with a ten foot pole.

Re: The obligatory tasteless meme

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

Actually, ya may wanna delete that. Certain readers of my LJ might not be pleased. Certain brands of tastelessness are not for all.

Re: The obligatory tasteless meme

[civilbloodshed.livejournal.com]

That's not even the worst one I found.

Re: The obligatory tasteless meme

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

Oh lordy, I believe it.

Hehe, I'm just counting the days until "Tasteless Cat Macros" gets its own LJ community. I'd visit it! Quietly, in a trenchcoat and fedora and sunglasses.

Re: The obligatory tasteless meme

[civilbloodshed.livejournal.com]

*whistles innocently* wtf_catmacros

Re: The obligatory tasteless meme

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

Oh God.

The worst part? My Mom would love that.

Re: The obligatory tasteless meme

[kali921.livejournal.com]

Please don't turn into one of the sociopaths that laughs at macros featuring dead, mutiliated, or tortured animals (or people).

Because that's what it is. Depersonalization and sociopathy.

Re: The obligatory tasteless meme

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

I'm far too empathic to be capable of that. Hell, I can't even watch PUNK'D because I'm uncomfortable with people just being humiliated.

And I'm ESPECIALLY sensitive to the pain of animals (although the. So have no worries there.

Re: The obligatory tasteless meme

[civilbloodshed.livejournal.com]

Eekgad, no! No cats were harmed in the making of that meme.

[kali921.livejournal.com]

...I'm sorry, but Jeremy and Devin using the Virginia Tech massacre as an excuse to wank about film on CHUD.com?

The phrase "insensitive, colossal assholes" is not large enough to contain either of them. I hope they both die by fire.

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

I don't see it as much as wanking as much as responding to the typical torrent of people pointing fingers in all the wrong places whenever something like this happens. This isn't the first time this has happened. Besides, they're members of a movie news website; would you really care about *their* insight into this matter? The only thing they're qualified to comment on is art, and in this small, tangential way related to a far more important situation, their arguments are relevant.

Art was held up as the blame during Columbine. Art was held up as the blame for juvenile delinquency in the 50's. And it looks like people are going to blame art again for this as well, which does NOBODY any good.

So I don't see it as wankery.