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via "Les Confessions" by dante.fs@gmail.com on 27/02/07
I recently watched Hot Fuzz. It was OK. Perhaps seven out of ten if you follow those sorts of categorisations. I don't really want to get into a in-depth discussion of the movie here though, primarily because there's a lot better reviews than I can manage already out there.Instead, I want to think about one of the things I found myself thinking about after seeing the movie. It's a point which I was reminded of when reading Jakiri's blog on Hot Fuzz (which I shalln't link to, mainly because I'm lazy but also because it's got spoilers and such).
It's about the idea of progress.
You see, recently, I was going back through some old work I had done. One of the advantages (if you can call it that) of working at the same place for five years is you build up (albeit inadvertandly quite a considerable portfolio of work of whatever form. In this case, it was a basic web front-end for one of our databases. I had forgotten about it, but people were still using it and I was asked to look at some kind of problem.
And upon examination I realised to be quite frank it was utter crap.
Now, I had never thought it was a Sistine Chapel of web-scripting, but I had just forgotten how terrible I was. And I don't say this as someone who believes himself to be some kind of zen master who has discovered how to channel his chi. I'm still crap. Everything I do screams self-taught bad-practice at every turn and it'd be obvious to anyone with an ounce of training how bad most of the technical stuff I produce really is. (Fortunately, that's not my actual job, but merely something I have to do to achieve certain functions).
But even though I'm still crap I can tell this older stuff is much much worse on a whole number of levels. Technically it's much worse (in terms of elegance, structure, syntax style, etc) but much more importantly, from the user's perspective it's so inferior than I've done more recently.
So what's my point? Wow, I'm improving. Big deal. But that's just it. Every single day I feel like I'm closer to solving "the problem". (It's never quite clear what the problem is, but I'm getting there nonetheless) and every day when I get to work I can see so many ways I could make things better it's often actually quite overwhelming. I feel in my giddier moments that if I was immortal and could work on these various problems for ever I could solve them all. That I would be, every single day, striving towards some kind of perfection.
Now, I freely confess that most of these thoughts are because I'm a lunatic with a drug addiction, but I'm sure you can all see some link to your own lives inw hat I am saying here. How much better are you at your job than when you started? how much more understanding do you have on your subject than when you started your degree? Whatever really. Improvement, progress is natural. Or so you'd hope.
I relate all this because as I say, I went with my wife to see Hot Fuzz. I was not disappointed with it, I must say but this was because I had already seen Shaun of the Dead (which I did not rate highly).
I do not say these things to be some kind of hipster contrarion. They are both good movies, on some level. But as I remember one friend commenting to another a decade or so ago, re : the Foo Fighters, "Well...they're not Nirvana are they?"
Similarly, Hot Fuzz, no matter what you say about it - it's not Spaced is it? I could bore you endlessly here. Do I need to retell the quite dull anecdote of how T&F phoned me in the middle of the first ad-break of the first episode to say with joy that they had "made a show about (or at least for) us"? Probably not, you get the idea. Fanboy through and through.
So I loved Spaced. I thought Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz were good, but not very good. So what?
Well, let's take exhibit B. I love the film Clerks. Hell, I have adopted the name 'Dante' as an indirect result of the film for God's sake, do I need to say more? And yet I mildly dislike Dogma, hate J&SBSB and haven't even seen Clerks 2. Out of fear.
The above two examples can be explained away through the fan(boy) principle. Once you're a fanboy, you're basically a wanker who can't be pleased and can't lisen to anything new with a "fresh" ear. In short : You have expectations. An obvious example : I remember quite clearly when Red Dwarf Series Six finished. Everyone talked about it at school. "To be continued..." Wow, this is going to be great! And so we waited. And waited. And...well, you've seen Season 7, you know the rest
Did our fandom spoil Season 7? Or was it the fact that Season 7 was badly written shit? In this case, probably the latter. But perhaps we were just young and naive and overlooked the dreadful jokes which the earlier series were littered with. And then when older, wise and more cynical we could simply not ignore the atrocities which filled Season 7. Who knows.
There are other examples. I can't remember the first NOFX album I listened to, since I downloaded a whole bunch of them in one go. I had heard them in clubs a bit (I later realised) but after listening to their output repeatedly, I find myself finding my favourite album firmly located about a decade or so ago. Not their first works (which they freely admit were shit) but nothing in the last ten years or so either.
Or Woody Allen. I remember watching Hannah and Her Sisters when I was very young (far too young to get most of the jokes I suspect) and god knows which order I saw the rest. But of the twenty or so of his movies I've seen, my favourite has got to be Annie Hall (which to be fair, did win Best Picture). But it's a film from 1978 for christ's sake. He's made something like fifteen movies since then, surely one of them should have eclipsed Annie Hall by now?
I think you might be able to see the point I'm getting at here.
I'll just say this. One of the people on my friends list could be described as having a somewhat delicate soul. I am fond of her, but she (entirely understandably) seems to worry about the state of the world. That the atmosphere will be ruined, that resources will be fucked up, that the many social and economic problems in the world will overwhelm our smug little western lifestyles. And she's absolutley right, of course. But you know what...? I'm not worried about any of that. Not really. Because I know we can overcome all of that.
It'll take time, and it'll take a hell of an effort, but there's going to be hundreds of thousands, no - hundreds of millions of people going to work each and every day getting better at what they do. And even things like cancer or AIDS or blindness. These are huge, terrible problems, but deep down, they don't worry me on a general level. Sure, they'll kill me, possibly my kids (should I have any). But eventually, we'll beat them. Because something like blindness will be made into a hundred thousand smaller problems and we'll kick the arse of each one in turn. It won't be one genius. It'll be a bunch of people. Working together. Either because of profit margins or because of the greater good, I couldn't give a shit why they'll do it. But I'm convinced that it'll be done. Eventually. Because that's my belief in progress.
But you know what depresses me a little? It's that, while I think we'll beat Cancer and AIDS and global warming and anything else nature throws at us...I'm not sure Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson will ever make a sitcom better than Spaced. Or that NOFX (or anyone) will make a better punk album than Punk in Drublic. And Allen's never going to top Annie Hall or Smith Clerks. Granted, these aren't big problems, but that's why I find it hard to be down about the state of the world.
The big problems will come down, bit by bit. But the small problems? Whedon making anoter show as popular and likeable as Buffy? Moore making a comic-book better than Watchmen? VNV topping Futureperfect? I don't think we (or more accurately, they) even know where to start.
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