OPE! Mixtape #15: Michael Falk vs. the Rain Man
Navigating art when you take it out of context (and time)
Well hello there. How are you?
I wasn’t expecting to use Paula Cole’s “I Don’t Want to Wait” as a gateway to revisit some old films. But life is weird. So is music, but in a good way. Here are some links and tunes for the week.
LINKS
The AI boom and its digital sweatshops.
Alice Cooper on his new album and the politics of rockstars. (This was me!)
Speaking of bars: How the drunk party anthem sobered up.
How game designers solved gaming’s most infamous design problems. (Even if you’re not into gaming, I love Game Maker’s Toolkit, and this is just a great video on how to problem-solve in general.)
THIS WEEK’S MIXTAPE
Listen to this week’s mix on Spotify.
(Note: Not every song is available on streaming services.)
Jeremy Parsons - “Life Worth Dyin’ For”
I’ve never thought to describe any song as “electro-county” without wincing, yet “Life Worth Dyin’ For” pulls off this strange fusion of technicolor big-sky country (think Kacey Musgraves’s Golden Hour) with synthy flourishes that I usually associate with today’s pop music, or at least the kind of pop-friendly country music that’s dominating the Billboard charts (more on that in a future newsletter; I still need to listen to the new Zach Bryan album). I think it’s how the song takes its time in introducing all its instruments. Parsons isn’t in a rush at a time when most popular music, even the music I enjoy, seems to be sprinting to get your attention and be short enough to get sampled on TikTok. Parsons’s voice is appropriately calm, like a troubadour who’s sad but isn’t a stranger to sadness, which is my favorite kind of country singing.
LB Beistad - “If I Was A Cowboy”
Here’s another song that plays with country themes but does something interesting and spacey. This could be an Alvvays or Sharon Van Etten song.
Purplespace - “Angel Trumpets”
I’m sure I could argue that “Angel Trumpets” is a play on the sound of some recent emo wave. The pink album cover feels like the biggest giveaway. I think Purplespace just fits in well with this week’s unintentional theme of country-sounding songs made by artists who probably live in a city, or big-sky road trip music made by weirdos. If you put a fuzzy bass on your track, I’m probably going to love it.
Jude Edwin-Scott - “Rambling Rose”
Can someone please invite me to their porch so we can listen to “Rambling Rose” at sunset? I would kill to write this guitar melody.
Jerry Barker - “After the Fire”
Same as above. I love anyone who can pull off grabbing my attention with just a guitar and harmonica.
Alice Cooper - “White Line Frankenstein” (ft. Tom Morello)
My Alice Cooper Vulture interview ran last week. Cooper was very pleasant and open in our conversation. Looking at how our talk reads on paper, it seems like a chaotic interview. We talked about his influence on emo (he does indeed like My Chemical Romance), not “getting” but respecting Nirvana, not liking Vampire Weekend and Tame Impala, going on tour with Johnny Depp post-trial, the difference between politics (bad) and humanitarian work (good), his faith, and more.
Regarding his new album Road, it’s fine. Cooper remains one of the few rockstars still indebted to rock ‘n’ roll’s original sense of boogie and swing. It’s a little better than you’d think, but not by that much. How you feel about Tom Morello outside of Rage Against the Machine is how you’ll probably feel about Road. I do appreciate that Morello is channeling some Danger Days-era My Chemical Romance in his guitar riffing, specifically “Destroya.” Road won’t change your life. Hopefully, you’re not looking to Cooper to change your life, unless you still haven’t heard Billion Dollar Babies, Killer, or Love It to Death (which, if not, go listen to those albums first).
Paula Cole - “I Don’t Want to Wait”
I watched Scream for the first time this past week. I’m a wimp when it comes to horror movies, but I didn’t realize how funny and meta this movie was. When I read Roger Ebert’s mostly positive original review, he viewed the film’s meta-ness as catering to an audience that defines their taste by their pop culture knowledge. Scream is enjoyable, he argued, only if you knew the stereotypes of horror movies and understood them as stereotypes. All these years later, Scream feels ahead of its time. Unlike other meta-heavy movies, Scream is still a fun time when you take it at face value and without context, which I think is the greater achievement.
The next night, inspired by Scream, I rewatched Scary Movie, which I now realize is 90% making fun of Scream, itself a movie 90% making fun of horror movies.
A quick aside. Most comedy, especially parody and satire, tends to age poorly outside its original context and time of release. Of all the arts, it seems like comedy ages the quickest. There are exceptions of course. This week, I also rewatched The Naked Gun for the first time in years. I still think it’s one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen. Most of its humor is rooted in classic slapstick comedy. Very little of it is referential. You didn’t have to be alive in 1988 to get these jokes. Watching it today, it is bizarre to see O.J. Simpson play a major role, though that’s not the movie’s fault (this was before all the events that we now associate with O.J.). Y’all also know how much I love puns and that Leslie Nielsen is my spiritual avatar; I can just look at him and laugh. So my bias is at work for a movie that maybe isn’t as good as my lizard brain wants it to be.
If The Naked Gun is a testament to good comedy writing, Scary Movie, and all its sequels and spinoffs, is a testament to the limits of relying so much on referential comedy, which immediately ties its humor to the year of its release and can come across as just lazy. Think of The Simpsons (in its golden age at least) vs. Family Guy. The former makes me cringe less when watching it now, but the latter is easier to enjoy if all you want out of comedy is “Ha, I get the reference.” This makes for some fascinating anthropology and a mixed viewing experience.
Scary Movie is indeed a mixed bag. Half of it is still hilarious. The other half feels tough to defend by today’s standards and taste, especially its very clearly mean-spirited jokes. A lot of its humor is mean just for the sake of meanness; not shocking, I know, for a movie that I loved as a bratty tween. It’s a juvenile movie that knows its audience. I would feel silly to try to hold its humor to a standard it had no intention or ability to meet. I understand why a movie like this wouldn’t be made today. I won’t punish the past for not meeting the ever-changing standards of the future. I also won’t defend these parts of the movie in the eyes of a friend or colleague who is at the end of its many mean-spirited jokes. Scary Movie doesn’t make fun of autism specifically (there are a bunch of disability jokes that are, eh, just kind of lame) but I say this as someone who’s seen many movies that rip on autistic people for … just existing. So it got me thinking. Probably more thinking than the Wayans Brothers intended.
My personal measure of balancing humor and taste in comedy and, to an extent, art in general: Is a person or idea a part of the joke, or is that person the joke? In my world of autism, I think of this as Michael Falk vs. Rain Man.
Just in case you haven’t heard of Michael Falk. Many years ago, when The Onion still did video shorts, Falk was a recurring character as an autistic on-the-scene news reporter. These videos are brutal. They were brutal even back when they came out. But not in the ways that necessarily make him the butt of the jokes.
Falk is on full display in the usual stereotypical depictions of the spectrum, with his need and desire for (hyper) clarity and routine and not having the best ability to pick up on social cues or tone. Yet his emphasis on only taking people at their word as a reporter without picking up on body language or context indirectly makes fun of the people he’s interviewing, how they respond to him, and the overall absurdity of the situation being reported on. His spectrum opens a door for certain comedic situations to arise. His spectrum is not the comedic situation. My favorite examples are when Falk interviews a prisoner and falls in love with his rigid routine and when he grills American troops (and the Taliban) in Afghanistan.
I’m not sure if the actor is on the spectrum, but clearly, someone on the spectrum, or someone familiar with its nuances, helped write these scripts. Not every work of art touching on the spectrum can or will involve artists on the spectrum themselves, but this kind of nuanced knowledge going into the writing makes this kind of comedy so much smarter and gives it a higher chance of aging well. It’s healthy to be able to take a joke, yet these Falk videos also are actually funny to me. You can have your cake and eat it too.
As you can probably guess, Rain Man is Michael Falk’s polar opposite. I could write a whole book on Rain Man (though it probably won’t be as good as Steve Silberman’s entire chapter on Rain Man in NeuroTribes, one of four or five books about the spectrum that I would recommend to anyone reading), but to summarize what’s relevant to this topic, one of the main ideas of Rain Man is that Dustin Hoffman’s cartoonish depiction of someone on the spectrum is an empty shell to make Tom Cruise look better. We as viewers are not supposed to project our own experiences or emotions onto the character. As much as I love and worship Roger Ebert, his lede in his original Rain Man review is telling: “Is it possible to have a relationship with an autistic person? Is it possible to have a relationship with a cat?” The Rain Man character isn’t for humans in the theater. That’s the job of Cruise’s character.
Rain Man is defined by his inability to understand that he is the butt of the joke. Throughout the movie, he is the punch line and the gear that allows the other characters to grow and have their own arcs around him. A more forgiving view is that the movie is more about Cruise’s character anyway, so it’s not necessary or even possible that every character gets a fleshed-out arc in a film that only has an hour and a half for character development. With that said, the development that is there for Rain Man is … shit. It was shit then. It’s shit now.
Rain Man’s spectrum is the comedic situation. It’s also a pity situation. It stinks.
(Pssst, related: I wrote a few thousand words on autism in media a few years ago for Vulture; give that a read if you haven’t already.)
Michael Falk is a part of the joke. Rain Man is the joke. I think that’s the key when I think about art and taste, especially in comedy.
This “Michael Falk vs. Rain Man” rule won’t work for everyone—I have some fellow autistic friends who don’t like the Michael Falk character for valid reasons—but I think some variation of this idea is helpful. I think it’s healthy to take a work of art and appreciate its strengths and how it was able to find an audience, be mindful of its shortcomings and original context, and if the artist does and says questionable things, consider what it means to promote that artist, especially if they’re still alive. Is a work of art closer to something like Michael Falk, or to something closer like Rain Man? There’s not always an easy answer. This is a topic that doesn’t translate well to social media, where context goes to die, and “If it’s not my problem, it’s not a problem” remains king. This is why I don’t ever talk about autism on my own social media. I feel weird even talking about it in this newsletter. It’s a hyper-personal exchange. So is the consumption and evaluation of art. This is an action that can really only happen between us and the art.
Another related example is 21 Jump Street. I love this movie. Again, a lot of the jokes are just plain silly and stupid and hit that part of the brain that still makes 12-year-old me laugh. There’s also a recurring bit in which Ice Cube’s character keeps commenting on how stupid Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum are and asking if they’re autistic. Because … they’re stupid, right? So they must be autistic. Get it?
It’s lazy. It’s shitty. Worse: it’s not even funny. It’s a drag on an otherwise great comedy. So I feel torn! I’m also not looking to Ice Cube’s character to define a disability that I know (probably) better than Ice Cube, the screenwriter Michael Bacall, or directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. Lord and Miller have a right to make this kind of movie. Viewers also have the right to respond in the ways they feel. Freedom of speech or expression is not freedom from response. I think it’s the push and pull between the artist and the consumer in action: the former tries to convey emotion or entertainment (ideally both) through their medium—less “write what you know” and more “write what you see”—and the latter takes this vision of what an artist sees, regardless of how well crafted or shitty in its execution, and thinks, “How does this make me feel?” And, if I can defend my own profession for a moment as a writer and critic: the role of the critic, among many things, is to help research, study, and provide this context that 1) promotes and enriches the work of an artist and 2) allows the consumer to have a richer experience with that art.
The famous Roger Ebert quote (I know, I know, I love him) is that films are empathy machines. They’re not truth machines. Art can open the door to empathy, but art is not truth. Art can compel us to change how we view the world and even inspire us to take action, but we have to make that change ourselves. Art can’t do it for us. Back to my favorite definition of music: It’s just notes; it’s people who give it meaning. This saying is overused and cliche but it’s true: Art is an ongoing conversation. Critics are the ones trying to keep these conversations enlightened, engaging, and relevant (good) or turn them into clickbait and compel you to think that other people aren’t experiencing art “right” and that you should clutch your pearls (bad). It’s a balance. I try my best. I still think it’s hard.
So thinking of all of this in my very tired mind, parts of Scary Movie still make me groan. The overall beats also still work. More importantly, the good jokes still make me laugh. As much as I would like to resist, certain potty humor is timeless. Some of its “poking the bear” jokes also still kill. I especially love the scene when the movie theater audience is “killing” Regina Hall’s character for being so obnoxious in the middle of Shakespeare in Love, with a nun yelling, “This is for Boogie Nights!” and a Catholic priest yelling, “And Big Mamma’s House!” It’s so stupid. It’s so dumb. Regina Hall sells the absurdity as we play with taboos and stereotypes. I love it, even if I don’t love all of it. Same with 21 Jump Street. I would consider it closer to Michael Falk, with hints of Rain Man. You might feel differently. That’s OK.
Ironically, my favorite scene in Scary Movie is very referential. It’s an early scene when Paula Cole’s “I Don’t Want to Wait” starts playing and James Van Der Beek comes out of nowhere. (His only line: “Wrong set.”) It’s a scene that makes no sense if you’ve never seen Scream or Dawson’s Creek. I absolutely love it. It makes me laugh every time.
Bruce Springsteen - “Sad Eyes”
Speaking of Dawson’s Creek. That original Dawson’s Creek window scene that Scream is making fun of is soundtracked by freaking “Sad Eyes,” one of Springsteen’s best ‘90s outtakes. Amazing! You truly had to be there.
And that’s it!
Until next Wednesday, as always.
Like this newsletter?
Here’s how you can help (financially)
Subscribe to the paid version of this newsletter for exclusive essays, writing and pitching Q&A sessions, and other goodies.
Gift a subscription to a friend.
Gift a subscription to an enemy.
Donate to my coffee fund, where the money actually goes toward buying coffee beans and filters.
Here’s how you can help (for free)
Consider me for freelance writing opportunities. In addition to music journalism, I’m available for digital copywriting, content marketing (writing SEO-friendly blog posts, articles, press releases, blurbs, and any other kinds of copy), technical writing (writing SOPs, technical documentation, or guides like my beginner’s guide to ChatGPT’s API), and bio writing (writing long and short bios for artists and other professionals). Shoot me an email at bradywgerber@gmail.com and we can talk more. I also have more information on my website.
If you don’t need a freelance writer but know someone who does, send them my way and recommend me.
Sign up for this newsletter!
Heart, comment on, or repost this specific newsletter post (see the buttons at the top of this page).
Share this newsletter on one of your social media feeds.
Share this newsletter directly with one of your friends, family members, or colleagues.
Seriously, y’all sharing this newsletter is how OPE! grows the most. Sharing really is caring.
Connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn. OPE! is also on Facebook and Bluesky.
Give Candyfloss a read. I built this app from scratch using Python and I use it every day to read up on music stories that I rarely see on my own social media feeds.
With love and all the other good things,
-b
website | donate to my coffee fund | find your local reps
OPE! logo by Claire Kuang. words and cartoons by yours truly. stock photos by Substack unless credited. animations made using FlipaClip and EZGIF. all typos are intentional.